LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — A woman who
sparked a high-profile international custody fight when she took her two
U.S.-born children to her native Slovakia and failed to return on time
returned to the United States on Thursday to face criminal charges, the
FBI said.

Maria Pfeifer, 32, is accused of taking her two young sons,
then aged nine and three, to the Czech Republic and Slovakia in
June 2012, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) spokesman Bill
Lewis said.

Pfeifer was returned to the U.S. on Thursday afternoon, the FBI
said in a statement. She was escorted by FBI agents and was
turned over to detectives with the Los Angeles Police Department
upon arriving at Los Angeles International Airport.

After she failed to come back earlier, she was found by
court-ordered custody terms in Los Angeles to be in violation of
the parental rights of the two fathers.

"She cut off, went dark on her phones, went dark on email," Bob
Pfeifer, the father of the 9-year-old, told ABC's "20/20" in
February.

A State Department official told "20/20" this year that they see
up to 800 such cases of international parental child abductions
each year.

Reported cases of international child abduction in the United
States declined by more than 23 percent collectively during
fiscal years 2011 and 2012, according to the U.S. State
Department.

Pfeifer spent months meeting with Los Angeles police and the
district attorney, before setting up a Facebook page that
quickly spread his story. Following a lead that the boys and
mother may have been in Paris, Pfeifer went there and met FBI
special agent Eugene Casey at the U.S. embassy.

Last August, Los Angeles police detectives obtained an arrest
warrant charging Maria Pfeifer with two felony counts of child
detention with right to custody, the FBI said. The following
month she was further charged in a federal criminal complaint
with Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution.

The court granted the victims' fathers full custody of their
children while Pfeifer was a fugitive, the FBI said.

In December, Maria Pfeifer was arrested at the FBI's request by
French law enforcement officers and the children were reunited
with their fathers and returned to the United States.

Pfeifer will be prosecuted by the Los Angeles County District
Attorney's Office.